Creative Sound Blaster Z Series

Everyone here will tell you the Z is the best option right now for your budget, so you might as well just go ahead and get one.

 

It happen a lot to me too ... never know , or find out how to solve that .. only solution was to shutdown and restarting teh system :/ :banana:

A lot of this happen when i'm going back from hibernate mode .. :bang:

 

Having issues with my ZxR at the moment. It's not being detected anymore.

SoundBlaster ZxR Audio Controller shows up in Device Manager, but when i start the SoundBlaster Z-Series Configuration Screen it tells me:

The selected audio device is disabled, not available, not recognized by the application or isn't wired up.

Then when i click to select a different audio device a new window pops up and all i can select is the ZxR. When i do so and select Ok it prompts the previous message again.

It was working fine all day...

 

Did it happen before or after you decided to take another identity?

 

Hope that doesn't have anything to do with it

Anyways it's working again. I think this Motherboard is the problem really. Might be ditching it once more C2 boards are out.

 

Would removing the cover of the ZxR cause shielding issues?

If you wonder why i would want remove it. It's because i cannot fit my front panel USB 2.0 because the ZxR cover is blocking it. And the last PCI-E slot on my board is the only option. Unless i want to run my Videocard at 8x, which i don't want.

 

I have the Z OEM, no shield, no issue.

 

Sorted the problem i had already.

I shortened the back end of the Female Connector. I only needed about 2MM for everything to fit properly

BTW, the covers are EMI shields and not just for looks.

 

They're mostly for looks, let's be real here. EMI interference isn't a problem for 99% of people. Especially on an add in board which is physically separate from the motherboard.

 

I know what I'm going to say is not as relative as can be to this subject, but back when I had my Creative Sound Blaster Titanium and GTX260, using the front panel audio jack, I would hear noise when I used to run Folding@Home on the GTX260. Of course, I always relied on the back panel due to superior audio quality, but nevertheless something to mention with the possibility of interference occurring when a high-power graphics card is under load (used to get coil whine on FAH btw).

 

Front panel is always a bad thing regarding noise.

 

Well i guess i could have gone without the shield seeing my ZxR is nowhere near the graphics card.



But as i said earlier, i shorted the issue another way so the shield can stay

 

This is the reason I don't throw my XFI Platinum out of the window due to notorious creative's bad drivers... I'd seriously prefer my onboard's Realtek 889 with best driver support you can find. But for my Z5500 speakers, I really love the Surround at 50% -simple coping to all 5 speakers. Even when my movies include native 5.1 sound, I have enabled mixing on MPC-HC and Potplayer in order to downmix the native 5.1 to Stereo and let the card do the upmix to 5.1 ( copy ).

Are you telling me that the Z series does not include this feature? I don't want to support again Creative, 'cause you know, they never properly support their products, but I wanted to jump to Z series... It's been almost 7 or 8 years that this card is working flawlessly, but the drivers were bad since day 1...

If that's the case and there's no Surround 50% option, the chances to buy an other Creative card just fell from a previous 15% to 0%.

Also, I see even the newer drivers for Z series have some of the same old bugs... Like they don't save the settings and some times the cards aren't being recognized... I mean, fkin SHAME.

 

yea, sadly the Z series does not offer stereo surround, only expand surround equivalent. for listening to music in stereo surround I've found an alternative - foobar2000 using "channel mixer" dsp plugin on "copy" mode does the trick perfectly.
I've also written a dedicated tool to overcome some other annoyances regarding speakers/headphones switching. besides the lack of built in stereo surround and some comfort related stuff which I already solved (and I don't think are necessarily worse than the X-Fi 3 modes thing), I don't experience real driver/hardware issues.

I might have considered plugging my old X-FI back in if I didn't unknowingly throw the perfectly working card to the garbage in a motherboard box !!! :cry:
but seriously the Z is a pretty good sound card. just make sure not to expect much from CL's software designers, otherwise you might end up disappointed.

 

Is it worh to upgrade from Gigabyte Sniper M3 onboard Recon3Di to one of the Z series? Or just get better headphones?

The onboard Recon3Di has Nichicon audio capacitors and Texas Instrument DRV632 amp. Now I don't understand much about sound but I'm somewhat pleased with current system, using Steelseries Siberia V2. It's 90% used for gaming, rest music/movies. But there's always room for improvement, no? Is SBX surround better than THX TrueStudio Pro?

Edit:

Been looking @ these headphones:

http://www.uk.onkyo.com/en/products/es-hf300-90841.html

Edit2:

Nevermind I'll order these

http://steelseries.com/products/audio/steelseries-siberia-elite

 

will I see much improvement upgrading from xonar DG to Sound Blaster Z using m50s?

gaming/music wise

 

if anyone is using their Z without the cover/shield for whatever reason I would like to purchase thus cover/shield from you!!

pm

 

Have the same card here also the OEM version with no shield and had zero issues with it. By far the best sound card I have owned excellent value for money.

 

Anyone try the new Blaster Z driver you can download from Creative's website? I tried 10times and it wont download.

 

What new driver?